In present day radio communication systems, new radio devices become more and more intelligent and are introduced side-by-side with older radio devices still serving a large community.
The communication capabilities of these radio communication devices are ever increasing and data packet communication is today commonplace, using for instance GPRS (General Packet Radio System). Data communication protocols used by radio communication devices, more specifically cellular radio communication devices, are, among others WAP 1.0 (Wireless Application Protocol), WAP 1.1, WAP 2.0, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), HTTPS, TCP (Transport Control Protocol), IP (Internet Protocol) etc., where many cellular devices give access to only one or a few of these protocols.
Parallel with the development of more intelligent radio devices are the development of more and more intelligent and demanding services for these radio devices. Since so many different devices are out on the market a service provider oftentimes need to develop a specific service only towards a specific subset of the available radio devices. Not always because the other devices are not capable of handling the service, although this will of course also be the case in many situations, but also since the development cost would soar when the service need to be adapted to the capabilities of the different radio devices.
It would thus be beneficial if a solution could be provided that would reduce development cost for service providers and increase the consumer base.
Another problem relating to this issue is the possibility for a service provider to charge for the usage of the service provider application. The service provider has no immediate means of knowing who is using the service, other than requiring logon using password with an earlier registration. Further more the service provider would have to find ways to charge for the usage of the service, possibly with the added complexity of sending separate bills.
It would thus be of significant interest if a solution could be provided that supported billing of radio communication device users for usage of service provider applications.
Another problem in modern radio packet communication networks is the incapability for a service provider to initiate communication towards a radio communication device. Although this has sound reasons in terms of security, many valuable services, such as instant messaging and pushing of live content such as sport results, stock quotes etc, can not be developed without this capability. An additional problem in this respect is that telecommunication operators commonly provides the gateways between intranet and extranet with NAT (Network Address Translation) to increase security. This scheme hides any address information of the radio devices from the service providers, thus increasing the difficulty in establish connections from the service providers to the radio communication devices.
For TCP-based connections, the TCP protocol provides means for determining start and stop of the transaction, thus enabling the NAT-server to set up mapping between an external IP-address and an internal IP-address when an transaction is started, as well as tearing down an established mapping when the transaction finish. The UDP (User Datagram Protocol) protocol is often used for broadcasting applications, but since the UDP protocol is state-less it provides no means for the NAT-server to know when a transaction starts and stops, and therefore mapping between external and internal IP-address is difficult. Thus, the UDP-protocol is often blocked, and is not available for service provider applications.
It would therefore be beneficial if a solution could be found which allowed usage of the UDP-protocol for sending information between a service provider application and a radio communication device.